Will common sense enter voter ID push?

There are signs a bit of sanity may be creeping into the voter ID legislative push in North Carolina.

A bit - a lot actually - would certainly be welcome.

It's a given no one is in favor of voter fraud. But outside the conservative entertainment complex, there's very little evidence of the type of lawbreaking voter ID would purportedly thwart - in-person voter fraud where one person casts under another's name.

The George W. Bush administration embarked on a five-year campaign focusing on voter fraud and managed charges against all of 120 people nationwide.

But based on the argument that it theoretically could happen, ID legislation has been rammed through in many states. Last year a bill cleared the General Assembly but couldn't withstand then-Gov. BevPerdue's veto. The issue is listed as a top priority for the GOP-dominated legislature and newly minted Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.

But during a recent visit to the General Assembly, McCrory signaled the may be willing to compromise on the measure, and there's talk Republicans might be able to accept varying forms of identification from voters.

That would be a wise move, as it looks like the photo ID mandate would be more than a minor inconvenience to a few people. The state Board of Elections crunched the numbers by comparing voter lists to Division of Motor Vehicles lists and estimated nearly 10 percent of registered voters in the state don't have a DMV photo ID. Of those 613,000 voters, a quarter are older than 65, and 53 percent are Democrats. As only 43 percent of the state's voters are registered Democrats, that provides more fire to the argument the ID push is about depressing the Democratic vote.

Given that voter ID efforts in other states have been pushed by GOP-controlled legislatures makes the argument that we're witnessing a coordinated national effort to disenfranchise constituencies like the disabled, minorities, college students and lower-income voters - groups that tend to vote Democratic - one that can't be dismissed lightly.

At the very least, should an ID measure pass in North Carolina, it's on the state to make obtaining an ID quick, convenient and free. To do that for more than half a million voters already on the books does not strike us as a simple or inexpensive undertaking. We hope Gov. McCrory and the legislature keep the scope of the challenge in mind.

And as we've suggested in the past, there are other ways the legislature can help voters. First, it shouldn't toy with the idea of cutting back early voting days and hours. One-stop voting procedures should continue.

It would also behoove this state, and all the states, to look toward uniformity in voter registration systems. A Pew Center on the States study showed 2 million dead people on voter rolls; some 24 million voter registrations - one in eight - have become invalid or have serious inaccuracies. About 2.75 million people have active registrations in more than one state. And about 12 million registrations have incorrect addresses, which means efforts to reach those voters aren't likely to be successful.

David Becker, who serves as director of Pew's Election Initiatives, told The New York Times that the findings don't point to voter fraud or suppression but to "the need for an improved system."

We'd like to see North Carolina lead the way on those improvements.

There are problems that actually exist. We shouldn't waste our time - and the time of hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters - on problems that don't.

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Will common sense enter voter ID push?

There are signs a bit of sanity may be creeping into the voter ID legislative push in North Carolina.